Problem is, everything is aimed to get you to level 90 asap, "endgame: where it all happens" the XP gain, the ease you go through leveling.
I did it lately, I have done quite some leveling in Vanilla WoW and I died quite a few (read: a LOT) times getting agro from a few mobs too many-----> impossible in today's game.
I was level 20 in 1 evening of leveling as a UD rogue, did not die once to mobs, instakilling mobs with ambush (rogue toon) or doing 90% HP damage with just a eviscerate while the mobs could not got me under 90% health once.
Imagine doing that with the heirlooms, and the leveling boosts by being in a guild or profiting from a 'recruit a friend' boost. My toon was just a bare toon with crap gear and no boosts/guild/groups and it almost leveled up without me putting any effort in it.
For the ppl that want to level up 'normally', I tried doing battlegrounds from level 10 on as I love PVP, I was facing 99% max heirloom geared players each time who kill you in 2 hits or me not being able to break a heirloom geared healer's heals.
I always had most fun leveling, endgame was not the thing for me, but there is no challenge in questing anymore. If I could go AFK and leave the game to my 4y old boy for 10 mins, I would come back and see him advanced 5 levels when I went for some coffee.
It-is-way-too-easy.
I agree that the overall direction has made the game a lot easier which contributes to combat being a little lackluster, particularly with heirlooms. However, as you hit the 80 and 85 the mobs become increasingly difficult due to the stat differences in gear for each expansion. I've never leveled with heirloom items, so I can't attest to how difficult these plateaus are for those leveling with heirlooms. I think we can agree that the problem isn't so much the revamp of the lower level questing areas, but the changes in combat and the overall difficulty of the quest mobs.
While everyone enjoys games for slightly difference reasons, familiarity with the game sort of killed it for me. To be honest, I've never had a hard time killing mobs in the earlier parts of the game, even during vanilla. While adjusting combat might lead to slightly more entertaining combat, I'm still way to familiar with the game to go back and enjoy it again.
Assuming they adjusted combat, I'm not really sure if people that have played it for years would flock back after the adjustment. It's really hard to say without knowing what the general feel of the community is. It's possible that most people only enjoy playing current content and a combat adjustment would not affect them one way or the other. On the other hand, people may not enjoy leveling due to the ease of combat, in which case an adjustment would renew interest in lower level content. Unfortunately, we can only really speculate, I only have my personal opinion and the multiple people I know that still play the game. It's just one of those discussions were it's going to vary from person to person, this leads to a lot of interesting theories, but not necessarily a solution.
When you look at this from a development perspective, you have to weigh if it's worth the time, money, and development power to adjust combat for lower levels, or to focus your power to new content. I think I can safely say that everyone enjoys new content, where as it's possible that not everyone would appreciate a revamp to lower level combat.
As for the lower level PVP, heirlooms really do ruin the experience, particularly if you are a new player. There really isn't a lot to do in terms of PVP until you get to cap unless you are geared in heirlooms items. Although, it seems like an easy fix would be to not allow heirlooms to be equipped during battlegrounds.
Overall, I don't think World of Warcraft has a bad leveling experience from 1-90, but it has a lot of systemic issues for people who have been playing the game for a long time.
Just yesterday GC, independant now, confirmed that the loss in subscriptions is due to not recruiting new players enough, while returning players quit quickly because of too many changes.
In an industry where the other MMO's went free to play it is difficult to recruit new players who think, why should I pay a subscription ???
WoW changed too much with each expansion and so returning players are turned off with what they left behind. In the OP's case the leveling challenge.
Both problems even lead to the fact the overall MMORPG market dwindles fast.
The mother of a friend I know wanted to start with an MMORPG, so she chose LotRO because it is free to play (logical choice for a noob). But that game is soooo boring and frankly subpar to the industry's number one.
So it is an eternal circle: other MMO's are simply too mediocre and don't hold players (hence why they turned f2p), while the industry's leading game changed so much returning players no longer find their joy.
This sounds almost exactly like me. I played for years and years, then they started change a bucnch of stuff to gear more towards kids, so I quit for a couple months. Came back played the crap out of everything including Arena, which I had not played ever. So I found myself bouncing back and forth between trying to get the best gear from PVP and raiding. This was in the WOTLK days. I really burnt myself out doing that because I was neglecting everything else in real life. Sad but true. Then I finally quit for a while then came back again for CATA, where they changed a whole crap load of stuff. Raid Finder? Yeah I want to PUG a raid, that sounds great So I quit again because I missed the old days I guess. Then I bought Mists and after leveling 2 toons my account was locked for some unknown reason. Blizz says it was a possible hack but I said whatever and left it closed because it was way too much trouble to open it again with all the new security measures where they text you a conformation code and you have to prove your ID. So I am done for good.
There is another factor to all of this that people tend to ignore but it is very important and that is that you also have to be part of the experience and not expect the game/designers to spoon feed you everything. You are part and parcel of the experience of the game and if you are not willing to shape that experience yourself, then what are you expecting to get from it?
Those that moan about how fast you level and miss content, have you frozen your xp at any point to prolong the time in that zone? Those that moan about dungeon finder and raid finder, what is stopping you from getting your own groups together and running the way you want to run?
It is very easy to point at Blizzard and blame them for adding or changing things and i don't say for one minute that 100% of what they have done over the years is right, but we do bear some of the responsibility for the game experience ourselves and if we are not wiling to make an effort to get what we want from the game then you have to accept someone else's vision of what that experience should be.
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
Comments
I agree that the overall direction has made the game a lot easier which contributes to combat being a little lackluster, particularly with heirlooms. However, as you hit the 80 and 85 the mobs become increasingly difficult due to the stat differences in gear for each expansion. I've never leveled with heirloom items, so I can't attest to how difficult these plateaus are for those leveling with heirlooms. I think we can agree that the problem isn't so much the revamp of the lower level questing areas, but the changes in combat and the overall difficulty of the quest mobs.
While everyone enjoys games for slightly difference reasons, familiarity with the game sort of killed it for me. To be honest, I've never had a hard time killing mobs in the earlier parts of the game, even during vanilla. While adjusting combat might lead to slightly more entertaining combat, I'm still way to familiar with the game to go back and enjoy it again.
Assuming they adjusted combat, I'm not really sure if people that have played it for years would flock back after the adjustment. It's really hard to say without knowing what the general feel of the community is. It's possible that most people only enjoy playing current content and a combat adjustment would not affect them one way or the other. On the other hand, people may not enjoy leveling due to the ease of combat, in which case an adjustment would renew interest in lower level content. Unfortunately, we can only really speculate, I only have my personal opinion and the multiple people I know that still play the game. It's just one of those discussions were it's going to vary from person to person, this leads to a lot of interesting theories, but not necessarily a solution.
When you look at this from a development perspective, you have to weigh if it's worth the time, money, and development power to adjust combat for lower levels, or to focus your power to new content. I think I can safely say that everyone enjoys new content, where as it's possible that not everyone would appreciate a revamp to lower level combat.
As for the lower level PVP, heirlooms really do ruin the experience, particularly if you are a new player. There really isn't a lot to do in terms of PVP until you get to cap unless you are geared in heirlooms items. Although, it seems like an easy fix would be to not allow heirlooms to be equipped during battlegrounds.
Overall, I don't think World of Warcraft has a bad leveling experience from 1-90, but it has a lot of systemic issues for people who have been playing the game for a long time.
Just yesterday GC, independant now, confirmed that the loss in subscriptions is due to not recruiting new players enough, while returning players quit quickly because of too many changes.
In an industry where the other MMO's went free to play it is difficult to recruit new players who think, why should I pay a subscription ???
WoW changed too much with each expansion and so returning players are turned off with what they left behind. In the OP's case the leveling challenge.
Both problems even lead to the fact the overall MMORPG market dwindles fast.
The mother of a friend I know wanted to start with an MMORPG, so she chose LotRO because it is free to play (logical choice for a noob). But that game is soooo boring and frankly subpar to the industry's number one.
So it is an eternal circle: other MMO's are simply too mediocre and don't hold players (hence why they turned f2p), while the industry's leading game changed so much returning players no longer find their joy.
Dying industry as a result.
This sounds almost exactly like me. I played for years and years, then they started change a bucnch of stuff to gear more towards kids, so I quit for a couple months. Came back played the crap out of everything including Arena, which I had not played ever. So I found myself bouncing back and forth between trying to get the best gear from PVP and raiding. This was in the WOTLK days. I really burnt myself out doing that because I was neglecting everything else in real life. Sad but true. Then I finally quit for a while then came back again for CATA, where they changed a whole crap load of stuff. Raid Finder? Yeah I want to PUG a raid, that sounds great
So I quit again because I missed the old days I guess. Then I bought Mists and after leveling 2 toons my account was locked for some unknown reason. Blizz says it was a possible hack but I said whatever and left it closed because it was way too much trouble to open it again with all the new security measures where they text you a conformation code and you have to prove your ID. So I am done for good.
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There is another factor to all of this that people tend to ignore but it is very important and that is that you also have to be part of the experience and not expect the game/designers to spoon feed you everything. You are part and parcel of the experience of the game and if you are not willing to shape that experience yourself, then what are you expecting to get from it?
Those that moan about how fast you level and miss content, have you frozen your xp at any point to prolong the time in that zone? Those that moan about dungeon finder and raid finder, what is stopping you from getting your own groups together and running the way you want to run?
It is very easy to point at Blizzard and blame them for adding or changing things and i don't say for one minute that 100% of what they have done over the years is right, but we do bear some of the responsibility for the game experience ourselves and if we are not wiling to make an effort to get what we want from the game then you have to accept someone else's vision of what that experience should be.
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.